In the Wake of Wanting (9 page)

“You may change your mind about that invitation,” she says, following me down the street to the park.

“Shit, Coley, what did I do to you on Monday to make you say such horrible things about me?” I ask her, smiling, but beginning to worry about what she could possibly have written about me. I thought we had a good interaction on Monday once we started talking.

She covers her face with both of her hands as she walks, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and causing her red purse to dislodge from her shoulder. Once again, the contents spill onto the ground.

“Does that thing have a zipper?” I ask her, picking up a lipstick container and a prescription pill bottle while she chases mascara that has rolled away from her. She grabs her birth control container just as I reach for it.
So she has a boyfriend.

“It’s broken,” she tells me, clearly self-conscious, taking the items back from me and shoving everything into her purse. Of course, all I’m thinking is,
why wouldn’t you get a new one?
But that’s a question generated by my privileged lifestyle. Maybe she doesn’t have the money to go out and replace a decent handbag because of one inconvenient defect. If she wasn’t so skittish around me, the zipper probably wouldn’t have been needed either time.

“I can’t fix zippers, but I have some Duct tape at my apartment. It’s amazing what that stuff can do,” I tell her, eliciting a smile from her lips. “I’ll bring a roll on Friday.”

We come upon an empty picnic table underneath a large tree, which seems perfectly
private-ish
enough for our work. When I sit down, Coley seems to agree as she takes a seat opposite mine. I pull out my red pen, ready to do some markups on her work.

“What do we have?” I ask her casually in an attempt to put her at ease, looking at the envelope she’s protecting beneath her fingers.

“Trey, I never thought you’d read this,” she says.

“It’s okay. Stop overthinking this. In two hours, you’re going to look back on this and realize how silly you’re being about this dumb assignment. It means nothing. Seriously.”

Her face falls.

“I didn’t mean that your writing has no value. I hope that’s not how you took that. I just mean you’re putting too much pressure on yourself for this one assignment. It’s really just an icebreaker for both of us. And honestly, Professor Aslon doesn’t even score this one. She reads it, but it doesn’t count toward your grade.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Okay. Well… let me see what you wrote.”

“You were never supposed to see it,” she whispers, finally pushing her work across the table.

When I open the envelope, I’m surprised to see stanzas on the page. It’s poetry. She wrote a poem. I never expected that format. We’re in a journalism class. We write for
The
Columbia Daily Witness
, not
The American Reader
.

“You weren’t joking about wanting to be a poet, huh? You
are
a poet.” She doesn’t respond.

Part I

It apparently has two parts?

His skin is fair, unblemished, smooth and pale.

And she wrote it in iambic pentameter…

His smile caught my eye across the room.

His stature built, he’s not just any male–

Trey Holland is a god, I must assume.

I huff aloud, realizing I made no progress on Monday with my mission to humanize myself to Coley. A god, I am not. I look across the table at her, but she’s got her head tucked into her crossed arms, and I don’t guess she’ll be looking up at me anytime soon. She knows what I’m reading. She knows what she wrote.

My heart rate soared; my pulse began to race

The second that his blue eyes locked on mine.

Embarrassed was the look upon my face.

I knew this intervention was divine.

Since I was young, I’ve had a crush on Trey.

But photos that I’ve seen of him are wrong.

He’s always poised, a rich man’s son cliché.

Perfection, clean cut, mannered, straight and strong.

In suit and tie, he always played the part:

Polite and kind, intelligent and good.

This heir maintained this image from the start.

The role he played, he always understood.

In public, his persona is a lie.

In private, I intend to find out why.

Something in me awakens at this. An alertness; excitement. If she were to see me right now, she’d see a smirk at the challenge she’s made to herself. In eighteen lines, she’s admitted she has a crush on me; she believes our partnership is divine intervention; she knows I’m forced to put on a façade when I’m in the public eye; and in the hour she spent with me, she seems to think there’s something more to me. To top it all off, she put it all out there in the form of a damn Shakespearean sonnet.

Who is this little laureate?

And what will part two say?

I look across the table once more, just to see if courage has roused her to lift her head, her eyes, but she still appears to be completely deflated.

Part II

The guy I met today wore rumpled clothes.

Disheveled tresses fell upon his ear.

A shadow lined his jaw and skimmed his nose

Though five o’clock was nowhere even near.

He laughed aloud like no one else was there.

His prep school language arts, he left behind

When he made gestures, then began to swear

With words like shit and damn; it blew my mind.

While some would be offended, I was not.

I looked at him in awe, in shock–in love

With the idea that Trey and I’d be caught:

Us–cursing, laughing–all of the above.

And then, at once, his eyes grew serious.

Intensity expended; clinched my soul.

The feelings. Passion. Heat. Mysterious.

Unbridled. Rough and rash. Out of control.

“Shit.” My voice startles me. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the awareness of my briefs getting tighter forces out the obscenity. This isn’t the time, nor the place… nor the
girl
. But seriously.
Shit
.

He read my thoughts–of this, I have no doubt.

I want to know this guy, inside and out.

I’m breathing heavily at the end of it, trying to figure out what to do with these sonnets. Trying to figure out what to do with these
feelings
. I have no idea about either.

“Coley.”

“Yeah?” she asks, the sound muffled because she refuses to look at me.

“Hey.”
Please let me see your pretty face
. She picks up her head and squints her eyes at me with uncertainty. I put my hand on her arm and look into her eyes. “Coley, you can’t turn this in.”

“I can’t?” she asks.

“No,” I state, shaking my head with authority.

“You don’t like them?”

“It’s not that…”

“Then why?”

Before I can think, I blurt out my reply, just as she guesses what it will be.

“Because it’s poetry?” she asks.

“Because she’ll separate us,” I tell her.

Our responses settle in a silence between us. I think about what
she
said.

“And that,” I add. That should have been the first reason. The
only
reason. My concern shouldn’t be whether or not we can stay partners this semester. I have a girlfriend. But in saying what I did, Coley now knows that I, too, have a desire to know her like she wants to know me. “I’m afraid she won’t accept it at all. That she’ll drop you from the class.”

“No!” she says, worried.

“I know!” I agree, equally distressed. We both look surprised at my outburst, neither of us able to breathe in the seemingly electrified air that is starting to suffocate me. If I inhale, I’m afraid these charged particles will escape my lungs and seep out into my bloodstream and begin to affect my heart. Already my pulse feels like it’s being controlled by a drummer on a cocaine binge. Breaking away from the pull of her stare and using up the air I already had, I speak. “I have a girlfriend.”

“I know,” Coley says.
Of course she knows. She knows a lot about me already.
“Zaina. She’s very beautiful.”

“She is,” I agree, trying–with difficulty–to remember what she looks like. “These poems… Professor Aslon may split us up. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“Then you have to start writing something else,” I urge her.

“I’m doing it now,” she says, grabbing her laptop. “I’m starting it right now.”

“Okay, but I still have to read it first. I have to edit it. My reputation is at stake here, too. You have to fix this, Coley.” After I tell her that, I look over the last few lines of her poetry.
She
obviously read
my
thoughts on Monday, not the other way around. As she was eating that bite of her blueberry muffin, the fork lingered in her mouth, holding my attention. When she flipped the utensil upside down between her lips before gently scraping off the last crumbs with her perfect teeth.

The fantasy played out quickly. I took the fork from her and threw it on the floor, drawing the attention of the rest of the diners in the coffee shop. In one swift movement, I pushed the table out of the way and pulled on her arm to bring her into my lap. She straddled me, her hands gripping the metal bars on the back of the chair while mine released her messy strands from the clip that didn’t want to hold them there in the first place. The hair accessory found its place on the floor with the fork and we kissed voraciously, uninhibited, unlike any kiss I was able to actually exchange in a public setting.

Well, unlike any kiss the
public
Trey she thought she knew would be allowed to exchange, anyway. I wanted to prove that there was another side to me. I wanted to show
her
that other side of me.

And just as soon as I started thinking that, I began to berate myself for having such thoughts about a relative stranger–especially with a girlfriend whose only crime committed was being away at school in England.

Passion. Heat. Mysterious. Unbridled. Rough and rash. Out of control.

She described that fantasy perfectly.

“Professor Aslon specifically said I shouldn’t change the content.” I look up at Coley, grateful for the old, wooden slats with peeling paint that separate her eyes from the hard-on that she’s unwittingly caused. I have to adjust myself to alleviate the discomfort, hoping she doesn’t notice. I quickly bring my hand back to the table’s surface. “Is that what you’re wanting me to do?”

I never wanted to be the editor that censors someone’s work, but I know if she confesses her crush and intentions to our professor, our advisor will think we can’t have a professional relationship. I know we can. I know I will be faithful to Zaina and control whatever lustful temptations I’m having right now. I have self control. Our professor would never assume that of a guy in college, though.

I know I don’t want to have a different partner.

“Yes, Coley. You need to tone it down a bit. Maybe shift more to what we talked about Monday. Can you focus on the conversation about how I got into writing? You seemed genuinely interested in that.”

“I think so. You were so vulnerable when you told me the story about that girl who died–Anabel, was it? I could feel your pain, Trey, and I just wanted you to let me hold you.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Talk about how well I communicated my feelings in my blog post. Don’t talk about how you wanted to hold me. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Yeah,” she says, then sighs. She closes her laptop and looks at me. “I’m sorry about this, Trey.”

“Don’t be sorry. Let’s just get it done.”

“I’ll write it this evening. I’ll have it ready for you to edit tomorrow after my classes. Maybe we can do a screen-share and chat editing session or something.”

“That sounds good. Can I trust you with my number?” I ask her. “Just use it for school stuff, okay? And don’t give it to anyone.”